Metabolic walking is the practice of livening up your regular walking workout with small challenges to fire up your muscles and raise your metabolism. The benefits include increased calorie burn, better cardiovascular fitness, and improved insulin resistance, which in turn may lower your risk of diabetes.
The metabolism is what provides your body with energy for essential functions like breathing and digesting food. While it’s largely set by genetics, you can pull on your walking shoes and make changes to your exercise habits to improve it. Metabolic walking is one way to do it, and unlike many trends, the experts are all for this one.
“I often recommend metabolic walking over long-distance running for women over 40,” says Gok Yesodharan, the head of personal training at Virgin Active UK. “It hits the sweet spot by providing enough stimulus to trigger fat loss and metabolic flexibility (the body’s ability to switch between burning carbs and fat) without overtaxing the nervous system. It is a sustainable, low-barrier way to see real physiological change.”
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Metabolic walking is a high-intensity walking workout designed to improve calorie burn, muscle engagement, cardiovascular fitness, and metabolic health through intervals and resistance tools, such as ankle weights, light dumbbells, or a weighted vest.
You start at a brisk walking pace and then add in your intervals and resistance work. There are several ways to do a metabolic walking workout, so we’ve outlined a few suggestions for beginners below:
Maintain a brisk pace: Metabolic walking involves a brisk walk at all times – if not faster. To find your brisk pace, walk with increasing speed until you can maintain a conversation but feel out of breath. You certainly couldn’t sing – should you have wanted to.Add in the intervals: After five minutes of walking at your brisk pace, walk faster (at a pace where talking is uncomfortable) for a further two minutes, then switch back to your slower pace. If you can’t walk any faster, try something else to make it harder, like moving your arms more or taking longer strides. Repeat this for 21 minutes (3 x 5 minutes of brisk walking with 3 x 2 minutes of interval walking), and you have a full workout.Find an incline: Another way to make your workout harder in the intense intervals is to do incline walking. This could be a hill in your local park or turning up the elevation on your walking pad, where an incline of at least 3 is a good place to start. Walk briskly up the hill for at least 2 minutes, followed by a gentle walk back down for 3 minutes. Repeat this four times, and you’ll have a 20-minute walking workout.Add in resistance: Throw on your weighted vest for walking and head outdoors. You could also try using ankle weights or holding light dumbbells (no more than 3kg). Complete 5 minutes of brisk walking followed by 2 minutes of intense intervals, and repeat 3 times for a full workout. Or, if you are totally new to fitness, you could try 5 minutes of brisk walking, followed by 2 minutes of rest.How does it work?In the short term
When you add resistance or intervals, you are essentially increasing the “metabolic cost of the movement”, explains Gok. “By adding weight, you force your muscles, particularly the large groups in your glutes and legs, to work harder to move your body through space,” he says. “This requires more cellular energy, which spikes your calorie burn during the session.”
You can also expect to see reduced glucose spikes after eating with a metabolic walking workout in the short term, says Dr Abby McKenzie, the director of medical affairs at Lingo by Abbott. “This can help maintain more steady glucose levels in the healthy range,” she says.
In the long term
Metabolic walking also has benefits when the session has ended, too. “It also builds lean muscle tissue, which is more metabolically active than fat even at rest. This additional lean tissue raises your basal metabolic rate (BMR),” he says. This is the rate at which your body burns calories when you’re not doing anything, e.g. sitting down or sleeping.
Intervals are an effective way to prevent the body from becoming too efficient during your workout, he says. “Your metabolism stays elevated for hours after you’ve finished your walk as your body works to return to its baseline, known as Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC).”
1. Helps improve your metabolism
As you might expect from the name, the goal of metabolic walking is to help maintain or even improve your metabolism. A healthy metabolism is required for everything from turning our food into energy to repairing muscles after exercise.
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Gok says he often recommends this type of workout over longer-distance running to female clients over 40. “High-intensity training can sometimes spike cortisol (the stress hormone), which can actually lead to stubborn midsection fat in some individuals,” he says. “Metabolic walking hits the sweet spot.”
2. Improved bone density
While a weighted Pilates arms workout or yoga is all well and good, we need activities that stress our bones as we age. This is what helps improve our bone density.
A metabolic walking workout, alongside regular resistance training, is a good example of a workout for this. “Adding resistance like a weighted vest creates a gentle loading effect on the skeletal system,” says Gok. “This signals the body to deposit more minerals into the bone matrix, which is a key defence against osteoporosis.”
3. Improved insulin sensitivity
A metabolic walking workout can help the body manage blood sugar levels, says Dr McKenzie, as the combination of cardio and resistance exercise “improves insulin sensitivity over time, making our body more effective at processing the carbohydrates and glucose we consume, and helping to maintain healthy glucose levels”, she explains.
“This is important for everyone to maintain health, and it’s particularly relevant for people at risk of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes and prediabetes, as regular activity like this can help people spend more time in the healthy glucose range.”
4. Better mood
Exercise makes us feel good, and any kind of walking or weights workout will have that effect as they trigger the body to produce feel-good endorphins, but combining the two increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex.
“This can improve focus and memory while providing a consistent endorphin rush to help stabilise mood throughout the day,” he says.
Go for a walk after a meal: To maximise the effects of metabolic walking, go for “even a short 10 to 15 walk after breakfast, lunch, or dinner” to reduce the “post-meal glucose spikes”, says Dr McKenzie. “This helps stabilise energy levels and supports metabolic health.”Stay consistent: It’s better to go for shorter walks every day or every other day than try to challenge yourself to big distances you’ll only do every few weeks. “Consistency helps flatten the peaks and troughs in glucose. Maintaining glucose in the healthy range more often is crucial for long-term metabolic health and is linked to a lower risk of conditions like type 2 diabetes.Focus on balanced meals: “Support your movement with balanced meals, such as fibre-rich vegetables, lean proteins, and foods with healthy fats like walnuts, chia seeds, and salmon,” says Dr McKenzie.
